Android app feast: The it’s-almost-Thanksgiving edition

Helping you get through the holiday, one Android app at a time.

Welcome to Friday and yet another edition of Ars Technica’s Android app round-up. We know how much you love to cut your teeth on new software.

Thanksgiving is just a few days away (in the US, at least) so be sure to eat sparingly to prepare your stomach for all the wonderful food you’re going to consume. This would also be a good time to prepare your Android handset as well by queuing it up with a selection of games and apps to keep you occupied during the holiday weekend. Here are a few to help you get started:

The launch of Wreck It Ralph, the mobile app, coincides with the recent release of the Disney animated feature of the same name. The movie follows the tale of an arcade game villain who decides to turn around his fate and instead be the protagonist. There are a plethora of references to classic 8- and 16-bit games in the movie, and the mobile app follows suit with "throwback" minigames.

The app feature three minigames including Fix-it Felix Jr., where you guide Felix to fix the windows that Ralph has wrecked in an old school Donkey Kong-style setup; Sweet Climber, which follows the same game mechanics as the popular mobile game Doodle Jump; and Hero’s Duty, an adorable shooter where you blast away cy-bugs.

The games are easy to pick up and drop, and the cast of characters featured within the app are sure to delight. For only a dollar, Wreck It Ralph’s mobile app is worth the multiple new games it will bring your device.

This week Expedia updated its mobile apps on both iOS and Android to include flight bookings, better hotel listings, and exclusive deals for its customers. You can check the prices on flights to various airports—even the smaller ones that only service one or two commercial airliners, as well as international ones. The visuals for the hotel listings are thorough too; you can take a quick virtual tour of the room you might want to sleep in before you book it. And every time you start up the app, a new set of deals crops up to help encourage you to finally book that spontaneous weekend trip.

So if your family is driving you nuts this holiday weekend, remember: you have a smartphone, and you can use it to book a hotel or a flight back with only a few taps of a finger.

OK. We get that the word "yoga" in the title of this app might be a little scary. Doing yoga for the first time can seem intimidating, but all of that stretching and contortion is really good for the body. After a huge, sleep-inducing Thanksgiving meal it might actually be a good idea to do a couple of simple yoga stretches to help with digestion and keep the blood flowing.

Pocket Yoga lets users choose between three different yoga practices, difficulty levels, and duration times. Classes are as short as half an hour or as long as an hour, and the virtual instructor verbally walks you through every pose while providing an accurate representation of how the pose should look. You can also choose to do individual poses at your own pace, as well as add your own music to the "classes" to listen to as you flow.

Pocket Yoga is the cheapest way to try yoga without investing too much time, energy, or money in studio classes. Take your Android tablet or smartphone into a private room and try your hand at some of the poses. You might be surprised at what you can do.

...Or you can have another helping of Pumpkin Pie. That’s probably what the majority of us Arsians will do, anyway.

"We get that the word "yoga" in the title of this app might be a little scary. Doing yoga for the first time can seem intimidating"

Pfft. Show me someone who's intimidated by yoga, and I'll show you a weenie. Now go lift some weights. I want to see 20 squats, right now, weakling. Then 20 rows, each arm. That too many for you? Fine, double the weight and you can halve the reps. When you're done, it's time to relax with 1 minute planks before we do some push ups. You'll be done in 15 minutes and burn far, far more calories than yoga.

For proper technique, there's JEFIT and Workout Buddy, both available on Google Play.

Three apps? Two paid? One of them a children's movie tie in? Expedia is not day-to-day useful. Most people would only use it maybe once or twice a year. This seems an anemic and poorly thought out list.

Can we flesh this out with useful apps for most people. And speaking of which, yoga isn't. Last time I found yoga useful I was kicking a giant green guy with orange hair who kept electrocuting me.

With kindle devices being black listed on the Google Play Store ... this list makes me sad.

This is exactly why we need more awareness of Google Play DRM and a strong competitor to Google Play, one without DRM which does not lock users paid apps to Google Play. Even better we need a standardised FORK to Android which will be less likely to try and lock users into Google.

Seeing how kindle devices aren't actually Android devices, it's not so much that the devices are black listed as much as they were never meant to have it in the first place. Blame Amazon, not Google.

As long as Google doesn't start banning Cyanogen devices that started their lives with Google Play (with Google being paid the appropriate fees), it doesn't bother me in the least.

If people want an Android tablet, there are plenty to choose from, at similarly competitive prices.

It SHOULD bother you. If you pay for an app, you want to be able to use it for life. Google is trying to use Google Play and its DRM to lock you into Google, thereby nullifying Google's arguments that Android is somehow "open" and nullifies many of the benefits of open source.

Is it just me or is the android in the graphic for the software recommendation article wearing a pirate eyepatch?

I think the designer of the image originally intended it to be for RootzWiki as the eye-patched Android seems to be their mascot.

paul4ra wrote:

It SHOULD bother you. If you pay for an app, you want to be able to use it for life. Google is trying to use Google Play and its DRM to lock you into Google, thereby nullifying Google's arguments that Android is somehow "open" and nullifies many of the benefits of open source.

Google are not forcing you to buy apps from the Play Store. They are offering you the chance to buy apps from there, and insist on DRM (in the Steam sense) to make it more difficult for you to export the paid apps you buy to other users. One reason they have to do this is because they make it *so* easy to install apps from other sources, just by ticking a box in settings. If you don't like it you are free to buy your apps from another app store, e.g. Amazon or SlideMe.

Florence Ion / Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.